Out of bed

   Nurse Alex called about 8 p.m., which is never good. 
   The nursing staff calls in the mornings to let me know about every new ding she’s sustained, every new tear in her onion-skin arms or hands, every new hot spot on her rigidly arched foot or the canvas-covered bones that used to be her very cute rear end. 
   My father said he followed that butt all around the Naval War Library until she agreed to go out on a date.
   The staff lets me know about her misadventures, faithfully, but in the mornings.
   Tonight, Alex said, she rolled out of bed somehow and landed on the floor. No skin tears and no blood. But any fall is a bad thing. Those bird bones shatter if you squeeze too hard.
   He didn’t witness it. An aide called him after finding her on the floor.
   “She was just lying on the floor grinning at me,” he said.
   With a goose egg on her head.

   I wonder if the air mattress malfunctioned. That happened once last year. It overinflated, ejecting her from bed. They took away the mattress for a while. But they brought back a new one because she’s so immobile she breaks down with terrifying alacrity without the self-adjusting support. The new mattress inflates but also has a scooped center, so it’s a bit like a nest.
   She’s rigidly immobile, never even rolls over on her own; and they took off the safety railing months ago, to make it easier to lift her in and out of bed, which happens six times a day, every day.

   Fortunately, Sunny slept through whatever happened and she didn’t have to witness it. She broods on bad events and sometimes becomes so upset it brings on a seizure.

Sic days

   We joke at work about hoping to catch the flu. Get the flu, you have an excuse to stay home and watch daytime TV. Stay-cation, Baby. Not a great one, because of all the headaches, chills and vomiting, but still: nothing to do but watch daytime TV.
   This week there’s flu at Mom’s nursing home, at least two cases, one of them on her hall, and that means I can’t visit. Nobody can. They lock down the building when flu is about, because flu is about killing old people.
   It is exactly the sort of situation loving families dread. With their loved ones locked away in nursing homes, the loving families are freaked out when told they can’t visit. I usually wake up once a night and worry about the meaning of life, dementia, Mom’s future or past, but during flu lockdown, the loving families are waking up twice a night. They’ll be calling over there twice a day, too, to make sure their loved one is alive.
   Instead, for me, this flu lockdown is a stay-cation. Stay-away-cation. Get-out-of-guilt Free Days.

   Sunny called me at work today, to complain about how boring it is to be locked down in the room with my Mom, who keeps pulling her blanket off her feet, and we laughed and chatted for about 10 minutes before I regretfully rang off. Sunny is about my age and has most of her marbles, but her seizure disorder disables her enough that her elderly parents are no longer able to care for her at home. Life in the home is restricting enough when she has the run of the floors. While the flu has them locked down, she’s stuck in the room, nothing to do but sleep or watch "Say Yes to the Dress" and "7 Little Johnstons" and wait for lunch to arrive on Styrofoam plates.
   “I'm saving my plastic silverware,” she said. “That way when we get out of here, if someone needs a spoon or fork in the Bistro, I can tell them to go in my room and look in the cup in my cabinet.”
   She’s also saving all her plastic straws.